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The prankster had clearly gone to some lengths to make the "landing site" look plausible by adding scorch marks, but Christie said an actual meteorite would have made no such impact.

"Effectively, a meteorite is not coming in at space speed. It's coming in a freefall through the atmosphere, probably only a couple of hundred kilometres an hour, and has cooled off a lot."

Reports of suspected space rocks weren't uncommon - old lumps of iron from sunken remains of old clipper ships had resulted in many excited "finds" on the Auckland's west coast - but confirmed meteorites were extremely rare.

There had only been nine cases in New Zealand history, including a meteorite that punched a hole through the roof of the Archer family's Ellerslie, Auckland, home on June 12, 2004.

Meteorite-related pranks were also sparse: Christie could recall just one. Some Kohimarama residents whose front window was smashed by "space rocks" that had likely instead been thrown by pranksters from the beach below.

"If they think they've found a meteorite, the first thing people should do contact someone who knows something about it."